FlashLine, Kent State’s Web portal that connects students, faculty members and alumni, offers several services for users.

Flashmail

FlashLine provides users with access to Flashmail, Kent State’s e-mail interface, through which Kent State sends notifications to the university community and where students and staff can correspond with each other. But this e-mail service is not limited to just the university community; it can act as a student’s personal e-mail account as well.

Jason Wearley, portal technical team manager, said students should use their kent.edu e-mail because that is how the university communicates with them. It is also possible to forward kent.edu e-mail to already existing accounts, such as Gmail.

“The biggest tip I can give (to students) is to keep an eye on their (e-mail) quotas,” Wearley said, adding that students may accumulate e-mail without realizing the space is limited and reach their 15 megabyte quota.

Web For Students

Web For Students’ services revolve around registration. This component of FlashLine provides users with their own personal information, such as class schedules, grades, phone numbers and addresses, and financial aid information. It also enables users to perform certain tasks, such as paying fees and bills.

“I didn’t realize how helpful (Web For Students) was when you use it for a class,” senior psychology major Mona Patel said.

On Oct. 1, a replacement system for Web For Students, called Banner Self Service, will be launched.

“It’s an enhanced version of the (current) product,” Wearley said. “It will tie into services better.”

Lin Danes, manager of electronic communication and Web content services and FlashLine content lead, said the new system will more easily provide personal information about each student, rather than going from link to link to get the desired information.

The Web For Students tab will be renamed Student Tools.

From Oct. 1 to Jan. 31, both systems will be used, and by Feb. 1, the new Banner system will be fully launched with more “deep dive links to the right spot,” Danes said.

Other tabs

Web For Students is one of the seven tabs, which open up different pages of FlashLine.

The other tabs include:

• My Campus – where important campus dates, news and a directory are located.

• My Courses – where the user’s course schedule is listed.

• Library – where users can search for books in several libraries and access other resources, such as audio/visual services.

• Student Career Path – where students can explore career options and search for jobs.

• My HR – where students who work on campus can track their pay and university employment history and allocate their earnings into a direct deposit account.

• Help – where users can learn how to operate FlashLine and ask questions.

• My Tab – where FlashSwap, a buying and selling service for students and faculty members is located and other information, such as news headlines and the current weather conditions can be found.

“(New students should) know about My Tab, and don’t overlook the phone directory if you need anything,” sophomore nursing major Aaron Frye said.

Customize your FlashLine

The information in these tabs is located in channels. For example, in the My Campus tab, the phone directory is considered a channel.

The channels are boxed off from each other and are titled in bold. Channels provide a summary of information that can be expanded upon through selection.

Users can customize the layout of their FlashLine page, and certain channels can be moved or deleted. Channels can only be deleted if they have a dark “x” in the upper right-hand corner of the box. Users can subscribe to channels as well.

FlashLine also provides users with a calendar they can organize and layout, and it provides access to organizational groups, such as an alumni or academic group. Users can also create their own groups.

FlashLine is accessible through www.kent.edu or at http://flashline.kent.edu. To log in, a username and password must be entered. A student’s username consists of the first half of his or her Kent State e-mail address (everything falling before @kent.edu).

A default password is originally provided by the university and consists of the user’s middle initial, the first three letters of the user’s birth month, the last two digits of the user’s date of birth and the last four digits of the user’s Social Security number.

Contact news correspondent Isabelle Jones at [email protected].

THROUGH FLASHLINE, STUDENTS CAN: • Schedule courses. • Check their financial aid information. • Check e-mail. • Search the Kent State phone directory. • Receive important university messages. • Check university pay stubs.